August 30, 2005. The TIFF online schedule planner is live today. I can pick up the TIFF film guide today (well, ok, Roro is picking it up). And I can buy the nacho fixins for our "Film Pickin' Party" tomorrow! (That's right Daniel and Jennifer, we're havin' nachos).
This is the first year we've hosted our own Film Pickin' Party. When I first started going to TIFF, I picked my own damn films with no one else's input, except the big SOLD OUT letters on the board in the atrium of the Eaton Centre. That was in the day before I bought the advance coupon book and did the nerve-wracking, spine-tingling Advance Draw, a brief private hell brought to you by the lovely folks at TIFF -- read more about it at Judge Adam Arseneau's Film Festival Follies, Part 1.
After I met Roro, I tagged along with her to her friend's "Gay Man (and Token Lesbian) Film Pickin' Fest-o-rama catered by Swiss Chalet". Now, it certainly was a good time. But of the dozen or so men there, at least 2/3 were there to pick up and the 1/3 who actually cared about the films ... well let's just say they had different sensibilites then me. So even after this event, the night before I was still frantically reading descriptions, ignoring those written by Piers Handling and trying to decipher phrases like "a dark searing look at the loss of innocence." Last year's post on TIFF goes into more detail, along with my vital film-festing tips.
So this year, we're doing our own party. And TIFF has a new process this year which gets us an extra 1/2 day which is great.
I created a Film Fest planning grid to help manage our 30-coupon book. There is an Excel version and a PDF version. I've set a goal for myself to do at least three reviews this year. Hopefully you'll see them posted here.
A few people have asked me, "Isn't film-festing a lot of work? And you're so bitter about Piers Handling's coy and evasive description of Twentynine Palms that traumatized you for years, why do you still do it?"
Good question. I think Judge Adam Arseneau expresses it best in his Film Festival Follies, Part 2:
Film festivals represent the cinema at its purest form: exhibition. There is nothing like standing in a line-up for two hours to see a movie that is sold out to capacity, have five hundred people cheer the opening credits, laugh hysterically at every joke, scream at every thrill, and above all else, participate actively in the moviegoing experience. After a movie ends, often the cast and crew (or whomever bothered to show up to promote the film) will offer an open-microphone Q&A session—and not even the most thorough DVD commentary track can compare to that.
[...]
But no matter how much popcorn you pop or how many friends you invite over, you get something out of a film festival that you cannot get in your living room. Certainly, you could watch the Super Bowl at home with your friends and have a great time, the same way you could watch a DVD. but if you get to see it in person, the experience is something altogether different. Same game, same outcome, same level of enthusiasm—the difference is the audience. The participation. The feeling you get when fifty thousand people stand up and cheer at the same time, the feeling of seeing your sports heroes in real life, to feel like you are part of the experience and not a mere bystander.
[...]
At a film festival, even if you hate the movie you just saw, you usually walk away feeling exhilarated, exhausted, and elated. You take that level of passion away with you and it augments your own, deepening your appreciation for the cinema. You simply cannot get that level of excitement in your living room, period. This kind of passion for cinema is literally infectious, like the flu; except with less vomiting. and slightly less diarrhea.
THAT is why I go to TIFF and why I continue to be giddy about it. It is unlike anything else (except maybe that time in university when I slept on a dirt field to see the Pope when he visited San Antonio), and I am thrilled to be living in Toronto to participate.